


Puzzle Pieces

by MoastedRarshmallow



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Coming Out, F/F, Lesbians, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, im crying, mulders crying, youre crying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-30 00:48:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14485089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoastedRarshmallow/pseuds/MoastedRarshmallow
Summary: Scully and Mulder share a connection.





	Puzzle Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> Shouts out to AngelBlue, author of "Defenders of the Indefensible". I love love loveeeeed the concept and had to put my own spin on it. If you haven't checked that out yet, do it. After you read this, of course. :)  
> Kudos keep me going, comments make me better! <3

 The FBI isn’t the most progressive organization in the world. Why would it be? It is dedicated to finding the most heinous of criminals and putting them away, to solving the world’s unsolvable cases. It’s not a safe haven for the outcasts, though you would think it might have a soft spot for them, seeing as how they are the usual victims for the world’s criminals. It does not. It prides itself on taking the last-resort cases, many of which smudge the lines of society’s take on morality but can’t seem to recognize the different sort of folks within its own ranks.

 Dana Scully is a lesbian. She wears this like her FBI badge. To her, it is just another fact of life, something she cannot change or prevent. So, she accepts it, and by extension, must hide it from her superiors. Everyone else knows, of course, that she dates women openly and without shame. They keep her secret safe, and she is grateful.

 The FBI isn’t keen on deviation from the norm. Uniformity keeps us safe, Dana heard once. She can understand the logic, but not in a practical sense. No one can be the same, that’s just simple science.

 Mulder barrels into her life and shakes away her logic with aliens and sisters and cigarette men. He does not take no for an answer, and she loves him for it. Under his bluster and confidence and sureness, Dana feels his difference, his divergence from the norm, and she worries for him. Not everyone can or wants to keep their differences under wraps, and that can sorely hurt them.

 And she’s kicking herself for loving him, because she doesn’t love men, remember? She tries to convince herself it’s a platonic love, but she’s not naïve, she knows it’s love-love. Intoxicating, romantic love.

  _Dana Scully, lesbian who fell in love with a man,_ she thinks. She imagines herself on the cover of one of Mulder’s conspiracy magazines, and snickers in spite of herself.

 Mulder is looking forlorn these days, and Dana remembers the sameness of difference she felt between them. It certainly wasn’t in the conspiracy sense; her logic is in her bones. It keeps her rooted. You can’t separate the Dana from the logic.

 So….

 She sits across from him in his office, staring deeply into his dark eyes. They had been discussing a Violent Crimes case and had stopped when it became too graphic to continue. The silence was comfortable, but something gnawed at Scully’s insides.

 She opens her mouth, and closes it again, uncertain about how to say it.

 “Are you gay, Mulder?”

 She had seen him flirt with women before, even flirt with her. But there was something… a cosmic connection, if you believed in that sort of thing. Something important that they shared. Something… that drew them together, closer than most relationships Scully has had, even when she had been a tiny bit in love, like now.

 A lesbian in love with a gay man. Now, _that's_ a headline.

 “To be a homosexual man, I’d have to be a man,” Mulder replies, distracted by the case and much too comfortable in Scully’s presence. The comment is off the wall, the implications are immense.

 Mulder looks up, realizing what he had said. He isn't afraid, exactly. Not nervous. Curious.

 “You’re not… Oh,” Scully says. That’s where they were connected, that’s where their strings of fate intertwined.

 She wasn’t in love with a man after all. She shouldn’t have doubted her heart or soul or brain. They knew better than she did.

 “I understand if you…” Mulder kind of stutters, and trails off. She hasn’t told this to anyone since her sister, years and years ago. She buries it under her suits and quips and passion for work, but it bubbles up every so often, with those she trusts.

  _I understand if you hate me._

Scully smiles, her red waves of hair framing it as if it was museum-curated. Mulder wants to cry, she could be losing her best friend to a simple fact of her life.

 “Would you like me to call you ‘she’?”

 Mulder does cry then, because of course she understands, she’s Dana Scully, the world’s wisest woman. Mulder would kill and die for her, she loves her, she loves her so much.

 Mulder wipes her eyes, and Scully’s arms are around her. Her loosened tie brushes Scully’s arm, Scully’s hair catches on Mulder’s cheek. They fit together like puzzle pieces.

 Puzzle pieces, tied up with string, held together by their same differences, hidden within an organization that hates their guts. That’s just the way it goes, isn’t it?


End file.
